It's still kicking. The ability for people to play on whatever shard they wish at their whim allows them to concentrate population as it suits which helps to prevent what otherwise might be shortfall on particular shards.

I think at current server population of active players it would be most cost effective for Trion to do a mass shard merge, keep the RP shard, for the sake of PvP players who think there is any reason to keep SS when no one plays on it in open world anymore, and then the rest can merge into one main shard

Why merge the shards when everyone is placed in the most populated server when log in?
So everyone playing together , but we also have the option to change shard when we artifact hunting, gathering or doing several zone events
I dont want a merge

Considering returning myself however I am curious are supports still shunned by the average player. I used to get all kinds of grief when I would que up for a dungeon run as an Archon instead of a straight up DPS. Is this still the case?